Standards-Based Grading
and IB Standards and Practices
November 24, 2014
Many of the slides and information in this PowerPoint come from the
work of Rick Wormeli
Grading Quotes Activity
•
•
•
•
Read the quotes
Select one that is meaningful to you
Keep that quote and pass the other
As you receive more quotes, determine
whether to keep the quote you chose
previously or select a new meaningful quote
• You may only keep one quote at a time
Grading Quotes Activity (con’t)
• Take a moment to reflect upon why the quote
is meaningful to you
• In groups: Introduce yourself, read your quote
and share why it was meaningful
Premise
A grade represents a valid and undiluted
indicator of what a student knows
and is able to do – mastery.
With grades we document progress in students
and our teaching, we provide feedback to
students and their parents, and we make
instructional decisions.
What is a grade? What does it reflect?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Proficiency
Understanding
Improvement
Progress
Achievement
Effort
Compliance
Hodgepodge
OR
Clear Standards
Identify the Principles Involved,
THEN Gather the Solutions
How do I grade with validity?
• Teachers must be ethical. They cannot knowingly
falsify a score or grade.
• To be useful, grades must be accurate reports of
evidence of students’ performance against standards.
• Any test format that does not create an accurate report
of students’ degree of evidence of standards must be
changed so that it does or replaced by one that does.
• Effective teachers are mindful of cultural and
experiential bias in assessments and try to minimize
their impact.
If teachers act upon these principles,
what decisions/behaviors/policies should
we see in their assessment and grading
procedures?
Do we really do this?
[From
Genessee ISD]
[Artist Unknown]
[Artist Unknown
Unidimensionality – A single score on a test represents a single dimension
or trait that has been assessed
Student
1
2
3
Dimension
A
Dimension
B
Total Score
2
10
12
10
2
12
6
6
12
Problem: Most tests use a single score to assess multiple dimensions and
traits. The resulting score is often invalid and useless. -- Marzano, CAGTW
A Single Grade = An Amalgamation
• Teachers must combine
evidence from a
multitude of diverse
sources
• This 1 grade rarely
reflects a true picture of
student’s proficiency
• Is impossible to
interpret
Disaggregate. The
more curriculum we
pool into one
symbol, the less
valid is the symbol
for reporting on any
one standard.
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
Student A
Fiction
70
Non-Fiction
70
Writing
70
Speaking
70
Listening
70
Student B
50
90
60
80
70
Student C
87
87
0
87
87
Student D
100
60
60
60
70
Just because it’s
mathematically
easy to calculate
doesn’t mean it’s
pedagogically
correct.
Time to Stop Averaging
1. Society’s definition of normal or ”average” changes over
time
2. Averaging tells us how a student is doing in relation to
others, but we are criterion-referenced in standardsbased classrooms.
3. Averaging was invented in statistics to get rid of the
influence of any one sample error in experimental
design, not how a student is doing in relation to
learning goal.
4. Mode and in some cases, median, have higher
correlation with outside the classroom testing.
Measures of Central Tendency
What we measure is the most consistent level of
performance over time.
Consistent levels of performance do not equate
to a formula (i.e. Mean (Average), Median &
Mode)
Comment from Grading Expert, Tom Schimmer:
“Adults are rarely mean averaged and certainly, it
is irrelevant to an adult that they used to not know how
to do something. Yet for a student, these two factors
are dominant in their school experience.”
-- From, “Accurate Grading with a Standards-based Mindset”
(Webinar, December 2013)
GPS
Grading Philosophy Statement
(Your Personal Navigation Device)
Checking Current Philosophy about
Assessment and Grading
1. What does each mark or grade on your grading scale
represent?
2. Does an A mean students have met or exceeded the
standards or learner outcomes?
3. How does your philosophy about differentiation and grading
vary from that of your colleagues?
4. What’s the difference between formative and summative
assessments, and what role does each play in the report card
grade?
5. If two students complete different tasks as part of the same
unit of study and both earn an A on the assessment, are the
grades equivalent?
Rick Wormeli’s Thoughts
0 or 50 (or 60)?
100-pt. Scale:
0, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 -- 83% (C+)
60, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100 -- 93% (B+)
Be Clear
Students are not getting points for
having done nothing. The student still
gets an F. We’re simply equalizing the
influence of the each grade in the
overall grade and responding in a way
that leads to learning.
Imagine the Reverse…
A = 100 – 40
B = 39 – 30
C = 29 – 20
D = 19 – 10
F= 9– 0
What if we reversed the
proportional influences of the
grades? That “A” would have a
huge, yet undue, inflationary
effect on the overall grade. Just
as we wouldn’t want an “A” to
have an inaccurate effect, we
don’t want an “F” grade to have
such an undue, deflationary, and
inaccurate effect. Keeping
zeroes on a 100-pt. scale is just
as absurd as the scale seen here.
100
4
90
3
80
2
70
1
60
0
50
-1
40
-2
30
-3
20
-4
10
-5
0
-6
Consider the
Correlation
A (0) on a 100-pt. scale is a
(-6) on a 4-pt. scale. If a student
does no work, he should get
nothing, not something worse than
nothing. How instructive is it to tell
a student that he earned six times
less than absolute failure? Choose to
be instructive, not punitive.
[Based on an idea by Doug Reeves, The Learning Leader, ASCD, 2006]
Temperature Readings for Norfolk, VA:
85, 87, 88, 84, 0
(‘Forgot to take the reading)
Average: 68.8 degrees
This is inaccurate for what really happened,
and therefore, unusable.
Grading Text Activity
Purpose:
• To collaboratively construct meaning
• Clarify
• Expand our thinking
Instructions
• Read the text
• While reading, highlight the following:
– Sentence
– Phrase
– Word
• You will share these three with the whole
group
Take Aways
In what ways could you use the final list of
words?
What ideas did not strike you as important in
your private reading that feel much more
important now after sharing out?
From Dr. Tom Guskey, “The Case Against Percentage Grades,”
Education Leadership, September 2013:
• “Why not use a 50-point grading scale and designate ten
levels of failure rather than the 100-point percentage grading
scale with 60 levels of failure? After all, the choice of 100 is
quite arbitrary.”
• “…[W]ith more levels [in a grading scale], more students are
likely to be misclassified in terms of their performance on a
particular assessment.”
Clarification:
When we’re talking about
converting zeroes to 50s or
higher, we’re referring to zeroes
earned on major projects and
assessments, not homework, as
well as anything graded on a 100point scale. It’s okay to give
zeroes on homework or on small
scales, such as a 4.0 scale. Zeroes
recorded for homework
assignments do not refer to final,
accurate declarations of mastery,
and those zeroes don’t have the
undue influence on small grading
scales.
Time to Change the Metaphor:
Grades are NOT
compensation.
Grades are
communication:
They are an accurate
report of what
happened.
Growth vs. Fixed
Mindset
– Carol Dweck
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic
Motivation
– Daniel Pink
Fair Isn’t
Always
Equal
Define Mastery
Agree on a
commonly
accepted
definition of
mastery with
those around you.
What is Mastery?
“Tim was so
learned, that he
could name a horse
in nine languages;
so ignorant, that he
bought a cow to
ride on.”
-Ben Franklin, 1750, Poor
Richard’s Almanac
Working Definition of Mastery
(Rick Wormeli)
Students have mastered content when they
demonstrate a thorough understanding as
evidenced by doing something substantive
with the content beyond merely echoing it.
Anyone can repeat information; it’s the
masterful student who can break content
into its component pieces, explain it and
alternative perspectives regarding it
cogently to others, and use it purposefully in
new situations.
The better question
is not, “What is the
standard?”
The better question
is, “What evidence
will we tolerate?”
Grades are a fragile premise on which to
base so much function and dysfunction in
students’ lives.
Grades are all to often:
• Subjective
• Inferential
• Relative
But we can do something to correct this!
Exit Slip – For Lunch
Six Word Memoir
How to use what we learned this
morning and apply it in an IB setting
Subject areas
Rubrics
Criteria
Marzano’s Four Point Scale
4
In addition to exhibiting level-3 performance, the
student’s responses demonstrate in-depth
inferences and applications that go beyond what
was taught in class.
3
The student’s responses demonstrate no major
errors or omissions regarding any of the
information and/or processes.
2
The student’s responses indicate major errors or
omissions regarding the more complex ideas and
processes; however they do not indicate major
errors or omissions relative to the simpler details
and processes.
1
The student provides responses that indicate a
distinct lack of understanding of the knowledge.
However, with help, the student demonstrates
partial understanding of some of the knowledge.
0
The student provides little or no response. Even
with help the student does not exhibit a partial
understanding of the knowledge.
MYP Provides - Objective / Criteria
Alignment
Objectives and Their Strands:
What we want students to
demonstrate.
Criteria:
A measurement of how
well students have
achieved against the
objective /strand.
The Standards are Given to us in MYP!
Great differentiated assessment
is never kept in the dark.
“Students can hit any
target they can see and
which stands still for
them.”
-- Rick Stiggins, Educator and
Assessment expert
If a child ever asks, “Will
this be on the test?” . . .
We haven’t done our job.
MYP Command Terms
· Use · Demonstrate · Recognize · Describe ·
Evaluate · Formulate · Investigate · Reflect
· Analyze · Describe · Evaluate · Identify
· Interpret · Justify · Recognize · Synthesize ·
Think · Document
What do they mean and how do they relate?
Assessment using the MYP command
terms
Criterion B: Investigating
“Best Fit” approach
The criterion work like
“buckets” that fill up as
students reach different
levels of achievement,
from the lowest to the
highest.
We should use the
“best-fit” approach.
With MYP Grading, Keep in Mind . . .
• -Command Terms
• -Assessing Each Strand
• -“Best Fit”
Determining a Grade
• All schools offering the MYP must use the published
subject-specific criteria and achievement level
descriptors to determine final internal grades.
• To arrive at a criterion levels total for each student,
teachers will need to total the final achievement levels
in each of the criteria.
• Subject groups must address all strands of all four
assessment criteria at least twice in each year of the
MYP
Example of summative assessments:
How would you “mark” this student?
Criteria
Criterion A
Criterion B
Criterion C
Research project
6
5
5
Poster project
7
Tasks
6
Timeline
7
Oral presentation
Test (not multiple
choice)
7
6
6
8
Final achievement level
Criteria Total
Criterion D
/32
Final Subject
Grade
Criteria
Criterion A
Criterion B
Criterion C
Research project
6
5
5
Posters project
7
Tasks
Criterion D
6
Timeline
7
Oral presentation
7
Test (not multiple
choice)
6
Final levels
6
Criteria Total
Final Subject Grade
Boundaries
6
8
7
6
7
Final Subject
Grade
/32
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1-5
6-9
10 - 14
15 - 18
19 - 23
24 - 27
28 - 32
Criteria
Criterion A
Criterion B
Criterion C
Research project
6
5
5
Poster project
7
Tasks
Criterion D
6
Timeline
7
Oral presentation
7
Test (not multiple
choice)
6
Final levels
6
Criterion Levels Total
Final Subject Grade
Boundaries
6
8
7
6
7
Final Subject
Grade
26/32
6
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1-5
6-9
10 - 14
15 - 18
19 - 23
24 - 27
28 - 32
Accuracy increases with sample
size; use clear and consistent
evidence over time.
Let’s look at some scores!
2, 4, 4, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5
2, 4, 4, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6
2, 4, 4, 2, 4, 1, 5, 2
Cathlee Gallup
How do we do this?
Words of Wisdom from
Dr. Haim Ginott
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the
decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal
approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood
that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess
tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or
joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of
inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations it is my response that decides whether
or not a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a
child humanized or dehumanized. I am part of a team of
educators creating a safe, caring and positive learning
environment for students and teaching them in a manner
that ensures success because all individuals are capable of
learning.
Personal Reflection
As a result of this session:
• One thing I will start doing …
• One thing I will continue doing …
• One thing I will stop doing …..
Contact Information
Jason Rubel
jrubel@bloomfield.org
Heidi Kattula
hkattula@bloomfield.org
Cathlee Gallup
cgallup@bloomfield.org